ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.
LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani struck out March 28 against St. Louis Cardinals reliever Riley O’Brien and took a seat alone on the bench in the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ dugout. Moments later, Max Muncy, standing near the top step waiting to take his place in the on-deck circle, called over to him. It was the seventh inning of the Dodgers’ home opener, and Muncy wanted to get a better sense of O’Brien, a 29-year-old journeyman right-hander. In that moment, Ohtani got what he probably needed most:
An opening. A chance to connect organically with new teammates. A reminder, perhaps, that nothing breaks down walls like the universal language of sports.
Ohtani walked Muncy through his at-bat, without the benefit of a translator, using hand gestures and a steadily improving grasp of English to explain the break on O’Brien’s slider and the depth of his curveball. Soon he was holding court for Teoscar Hernández and James Outman, too, a scene that has become familiar in the season’s first two-plus weeks.
Said Outman: “We speak the same language of baseball.”
Ohtani is both the biggest baseball star in the world and the sport’s greatest mystery. The enormity of his profile has almost necessitated a life of secrecy, one that has often distanced him from even his own teammates. Few, if any, can relate to his level of fame. The language barrier doesn’t help. The reality of his role this season, a designated hitter still in the early stages of his recovery as a pitcher, has put him on what Dodgers manager Dave Roberts described as “an island,” often alone in his work. And the betting scandal that surrounds Ohtani — triggering the firing of his former interpreter and confidant, Ippei Mizuhara, who has since been charged with bank fraud — seems to have separated him further.
One of the best ways to bridge that gap, the Dodgers have learned, is through the conversations that sprout within baseball games, many of them dugout scouting reports between at-bats. In those settings, Ohtani has been as much a provider as he has been a recipient.
“He understands baseball,” Muncy said. “There’s guys that I’ve never faced that he’s faced, guys that I’ve faced that he’s never faced, just being in two different leagues the last several years. And you’ve seen it with everybody. He’s trying to interact. He’s trying to just see what the pitch feels like, what the action feels like. And I give credit to him because he’s trying not to use a translator. He’s trying to just interact. There might be a language barrier but this is baseball, so it’s just easier for him to communicate.”
The Dodgers have mostly cruised through the early part of this season, winning 10 of 16 games and losing only one of five series. The top half of their lineup has been predictably devastating, with cleanup hitter Will Smith showing he might be just as big a force as Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, who bat in front of him. The dominance of Tyler Glasnow, the acclimation of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the promise of Bobby Miller have provided hints of brilliance for the rotation.
The Dodgers are far from perfect — key players are still struggling, the infield defense looks shoddy, and an effective lefty reliever might be needed — but their rise to the top of the National League West has felt inevitable since Opening Day. Their biggest initial challenge, then, has been navigating the attention that surrounds Ohtani and integrating him into the group.
“The best thing we can all do is treat him like a regular baseball player, like everyone else in the clubhouse,” Roberts said. “Someone that’s so unique and so talented, I think people tend to get tentative and shy away. But in the clubhouse, you can’t do that.”
The dynamic of interacting with Ohtani changed dramatically March 21, when the Dodgers fired Mizuhara in the wake of media inquiries surrounding at least $4.5 million in wire transfers sent from Ohtani’s bank account to a Southern California bookmaking operation under federal investigation. Ohtani emphatically denied involvement while delivering a prolonged statement March 25. Seventeen days later, on Thursday, federal authorities presented reams of phone records and bank statements showing, according to an affidavit, that Mizuhara took more than $16 million from an account owned by Ohtani to pay gambling debts without the two-way superstar’s knowledge.
The betting scandal had thrust Ohtani into the center of controversy at a time when he was adapting to a new team and facing the pressure of a $700 million contract. The person he would lean on most to navigate through something like that was gone, ironically enough because he allegedly put him through it in the first place. Roberts, though, believed not having Mizuhara around would actually make things easier. In the manager’s mind, it would streamline communication and force Ohtani outside his comfort zone.
“We’re seeing more of that,” Roberts said last week. “I think there’s more conversations, and I think that, in the long term, the long haul, over the course of the season, it’s going to be very beneficial.”
Ohtani is riding a 16-for-35 stretch that includes 12 extra-base hits, four of them homers, putting a slow start behind him and making it seem as if he were unaffected by the drama. While addressing the media Monday in Minneapolis, Ohtani, speaking through new interpreter Will Ireton, said: “Regardless of whatever happens off the field, my ability to continue to play baseball hasn’t changed. It’s my job to make sure that I play to the best of my abilities.”
Members of Ohtani’s former team, the Los Angeles Angels, frequently lauded his ability to eliminate distractions and center his focus, a key to his ability to juggle hitting and pitching simultaneously. Dodgers teammates have seen that manifest itself in a whole new way.
“Only he knows what’s inside and what he’s feeling, but he’s not showing it — and that means a lot,” Hernández said. “I think that’s being a professional. I know you’re dealing with something big off the field, but he’s still coming in here, focused, getting the job done and doing it for the team.”
Ohtani and Hernández, a corner outfielder signed to a one-year contract after a short stint with the Seattle Mariners, quickly became friends upon joining the Dodgers. Ohtani has often been described as uncommonly soft-spoken and respectful for a star of his caliber, but he also has a playful side. Hernández has been one of a few Dodgers to tap into it so far.
Replacing Mizuhara with Ireton, a longtime team employee who maintains other responsibilities and is nowhere near as involved in Ohtani’s life, has helped carve a path for others to connect with Ohtani, several members of the Dodgers have said. Teammates have seemed more willing to approach Ohtani on a whim, simply because there isn’t somebody constantly by his side. They’ve noticed Ohtani begin to open up more — at his locker, in hitters’ meetings and, perhaps most notably, during games.
Outman has often found himself talking with Ohtani about opposing pitchers because he sees the ball similarly as a fellow left-handed hitter. Asked what he has noticed about Ohtani through those interactions, Outman said: “That sometimes the game seems too easy for him.”
“He’s a ballplayer just like any of us. But he’s just extremely talented.”
“Yeah, I just found that out — pretty cool,” Greene said after fueling an eight-run, seven-hit outburst in the ninth. “But the game is over. We got to show up tomorrow and try to win another baseball game.”
The score was tied 1-1 when Greene, facing Angels closer Kenley Jansen, led off the ninth with a 371-foot homer off the top of the right-field wall.
Colt Keith followed with a homer to left-center for a 2-1 lead, Jace Jung singled with one out, and Javier Báez hit a two-out, two-run shot to left for a 5-1 lead, giving the Tigers’ center fielder home runs in three straight games.
The Tigers, who have an American League-best 21-12 record, weren’t through. Kerry Carpenter singled, Zach McKinstry doubled, knocking Jansen out of the game, and Carpenter scored on a wild pitch to make it 6-1.
Spencer Torkelson walked, giving Greene a shot at history, and the cleanup man seized the moment, crushing a 409-foot homer to right-center off left-hander Jake Eder for a 9-1 lead.
Greene is the first Tigers player to hit two homers in an inning since Magglio Ordonez did so in the second inning against the Oakland Athletics on Aug. 12, 2007. The only other Tigers player to homer twice in an inning is Hall of Famer Al Kaline against the Kansas City A’s on April 17, 1955, in the sixth inning.
“He’s made an All-Star team, he’s been a featured player on our team, he hits in the middle of the order, he gets all the toughest matchups, and he asks for more,” Detroit manager A.J. Hinch said of Greene, who is batting .276 with an .828 OPS, 7 homers and 20 RBIs this season.
“You want guys to be rewarded when they work as hard as they do, and tonight was a huge night for him.”
Greene joined the Angels’ Jo Adell as the only players to hit multiple homers in an inning this season. Adell did it April 10 at Tampa Bay, in the fifth inning.
It was the second straight night in which the Tigers have landed a few late-inning haymakers in Anaheim. Detroit scored eight runs on seven hits in the eighth and ninth innings of Thursday night’s 10-4 victory over the Angels, who have lost seven straight and 15 of their past 19 games.
“There’s no quit in our team,” said ace Tarik Skubal, who gave up 1 run and 4 hits and struck out 8 in 6 innings Friday night. “We grind out at-bats, we don’t give away at-bats, and I think our record shows that. They grind out starters, relievers … I know I wouldn’t want to face a lineup like that. Every at-bat, they’re in it.”
ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Which version of the 2025 Atlanta Braves is the real version of the 2025 Atlanta Braves?
The first few weeks of the season were quite a journey, one akin to a roller-coaster ride that, like the amusement park attraction, ended more or less where it began — at the beginning.
Then Opening Day arrived, with the Braves starting off on a tough seven-game road trip against the San Diego Padres and Dodgers. Atlanta lost all seven games, scoring no runs or one run in four of those defeats.
That is not the way to knock the Dodgers off the mountaintop. Indeed, the old adage about early-season baseball has always been that you can’t win the pennant in April, but you might very well lose it. In becoming the 30th team since 1901 to begin a season with seven straight losses, the Braves flirted with some discouraging history.
Still, the Braves’ April story was as much defined by how they eventually responded to that early slump. Atlanta continued to flounder into the middle of the month, but then reeled off nine wins in 11 games, nearly leveling the ship.
The Braves haven’t yet reached the .500 mark this season, but it seems inevitable they soon will — and they already pushed their run differential out of negative territory. All in all, Atlanta can at least exhale after the initial stumbles.
To sum it up: Atlanta entered the campaign anointed as the Dodgers’ prime challenger — 2025 Braves version 1. They proceeded to put up one of the 30 worst starts in 125 years — 2025 Braves version 2. And before April was over, they’d already climbed back to break-even (or thereabouts) which, in effect, resets their near-disastrous season — 2025 Braves version 3.
Three very different versions of the same team. Which leads back to our initial question: Which Braves are the real Braves?
The 0-7 Braves make ugly history
As mentioned, the Braves are now one of 30 teams to begin a season 0-7, and it’s the fifth time a Braves club has appeared on that list, joining 1919, 1980, 1988 and 2016. That ties the Detroit Tigers for the most of any franchise.
Historically speaking, a start that bad and that prolonged rings the death knell in terms of pennant contention. None of the first 29 teams on the list made the playoffs. Indeed, only two managed to finish over .500, and none of the 29 ended with a positive run differential.
Thus, if the Braves complete their rapid climb back to .500 and keep that run differential in the black, they will have already subverted every other team on the 0-7 list. This really is not that surprising, because the 2025 Braves are way better than those other 29 teams.
In my historical database, among the various team measures I have are three-year power ratings, used to identify how strong (or not strong) teams were in multiseason windows. If we use Atlanta’s season-opening over/under figure as a proxy for their 2025 level, we can estimate their three-year power rating at 95.6 (or 95.6 wins per 162 games).
Only two of the other 29 teams on the 0-7 list had three-year power ratings of 81 or better — the 1945 Boston Red Sox and the 1983 Astros. Boston had a 86.6 three-year power rating, but it was a special case because of the sudden change in rosters across baseball tracing to players returning from military service. The 1945 Red Sox did not have Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr or Johnny Pesky. But the 1946 Red Sox had all of them, and won the pennant. A very different case than the 2025 Braves.
The 1983 Astros were more akin to these Braves, and were one of the two 0-7 starters that climbed back over .500 by the end of the season. (The other was the 1980 Braves, who finished 81-80 while being outscored by 30 runs.) Houston ended up 85-77 after its terrible start, which actually stretched to nine straight season-opening losses. The Astros finished three runs in the red in differential, however, and had a three-year power rating of 81.4, more than 14 wins shy of the current Braves.
So, of the 30 teams that started 0-7, the Braves were the most likely of them to bounce back from such a terrible beginning. They spent the last half of April proving that to be the case.
How the offense has helped fuel their turnaround
We’ve already noted how anemic the Braves’ offense was during their opening road trip. Atlanta averaged just two runs per game and batted .151 as a team during the skid. The Braves’ collective team OPS (.485) was the worst in baseball.
It took a while, but the Braves’ bats have heated up. Heading into their series with the Dodgers, Atlanta had scored 4.9 runs per game (10th in MLB) and posted a .779 OPS (fifth) since their slump. They’ve done this even as they continue to wait on Ronald Acuna Jr.’s season debut after last year’s knee surgery.
The drivers of the offensive uptick have been a little surprising. Sean Murphy had clubbed seven homers in 17 games since coming off the IL, one season after he hit 10 in 72 contests. Young catcher Drake Baldwin had a 1.009 OPS since April 3 and 30-year-old Eli White was at 1.012.
Those surprising outbursts, along with the expected contributions of Marcell Ozuna and Austin Riley, have helped the offense recover even as Matt Olson (.767 OPS), Michael Harris II (.614) and Ozzie Albies (.664) were still seeking to reach their career levels.
Still, issues linger
The Braves’ pitching still rates as roughly league average for the season as a whole. Last season’s NL Cy Young winner Chris Sale has been inconsistent so far, leaving Spencer Schwellenbach as the only rotation member producing at league average or better.
Sale should be fine, but the Braves very much need their big two to become a big three because of what looks like a lack of high-quality rotation depth. In other words, after getting just one start out of Spencer Strider over the season’s first few weeks, they need him to get healthy and stay that way. Strider (Grade 1 hamstring strain) is expected to return later this month.
In the bullpen, the Braves have been so-so, mostly because of the struggles of star closer Raisel Iglesias to keep the ball in the yard. After surrendering just four long balls in all of 2024, Iglesias coughed up five homers in his first 11 outings. Because the pitching has underachieved, the Braves’ bounce-back has been more warm than boiling.
But the recovery has been undergirded by pretty strong indicators. Atlanta’s run differential during the recent 14-9 stretch is equivalent to a 94-win team over a full season, putting the Braves on par with preseason expectations during that span. The problem of course is that 0-7 start.
The other problem is that the National League is full of really good teams.
Have you heard the NL is stacked?
The Braves sat at 14-16 through 30 games. Let’s say they maintain the 94-win quality they reached during their recovery over their remaining 132 games. That’s a .580 winning percentage, which gets Atlanta to 90 or 91 wins by the end of the season.
If all the teams in the NL were to maintain their current paces (which is admittedly unlikely), there would be five teams that finished with 96 wins or more — the Mets, Dodgers, Padres, Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants.
You can see the Braves’ dilemma: Only one playoff slot would be up for grabs. If Atlanta is able to get to 90 or 91 wins, it would be in the mix, but would need to hope that neither Philadelphia nor the Arizona Diamondbacks (both on pace for 88 wins) catch fire, or that one of the top five fall off.
The forecasts don’t rule out anything. At FanGraphs, the Braves are making the playoffs in about 70% of simulations, as their model sees the NL East contenders as better than the non-Dodgers contenders in the NL West. Baseball Prospectus has the Braves getting to 92 wins but reaching the playoffs just 54% of the time.
Finally, at ESPN BET, the Braves’ over/under for wins has fallen to 88.5, the same as Arizona but less than the Mets (94.5), Phillies (91.5) and Padres (89.5). The upstart Giants are at 84.5.
The Braves are back in the running, but those seven games, along with the strength of the top of the NL, have reduced their margin of error considerably.
How well will they play in May — and beyond — and will it be enough?
Atlanta’s season might depend on, well, May, or these key upcoming weeks before Strider and Acuna rejoin the team. However they got here, the Braves are currently a middle-of-the-pack team at the bottom line, both in the win-loss column and by run differential. If they continue at this level while waiting for their stars to return, the strong upper tier of the NL could move away from them.
The upcoming schedule, beginning with the current series against the Dodgers, is tough in ways both obvious and sneaky.
After L.A. departs on Sunday, the over-.500 Cincinnati Reds visit, before Atlanta travels to play the Pittsburgh Pirates. There are two series against the Washington Nationals, one at home and one away, and if you’re still thinking of the Nats as pushovers, you haven’t been paying attention.
There’s a return match with San Diego, a trip to Boston, a visit from the Red Sox, and a key three-game set on the road against the Phillies. It’s not an easy docket for any club, but especially for one missing two of its biggest stars.
The Braves have mostly righted their teetering ship after their stunning start. Since those seven opening losses, they’ve been what we thought they would be. Chances are, as the season progresses, players find their level and the roster gets healthier, that will continue to be the case.
The real Braves weren’t the team that started 0-7. They might be the team that’s played much better since. Now, in what’s shaping up as a crowded and strong upper tier in the NL playoff hierarchy, they have to hope that even if they maintain their expected level, it proves to be good enough for another trip to October.
BOSTON — Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas suffered what manager Alex Cora called a “significant” left knee injury after he awkwardly fell near first base in the bottom of the second inning against the Minnesota Twins on Friday night.
Speaking after Boston’s 6-1 win, Cora said Casas was taken to a local hospital, where he was undergoing more tests on the knee. He said the team would have more information Saturday.
Casas sent a slow roller up the first-base line that Twins starter Joe Ryan bobbled before making an underhand throw to first baseman Ty France. Casas, who was ruled safe on the Ryan error, collapsed to the ground holding his knee as he crossed the bag.
He was carried off the field on a stretcher and replaced by Romy Gonzalez.
“Seemed like he was in shock, to be honest with you,” Cora told reporters. “He said it right away that he didn’t feel it. …. It’s tough.
“He put so much effort in the offseason. I know how he works. Everything he went through in the offseason getting ready for this. He was looking forward to having a big season for us. It didn’t start the way he wanted, but he kept grinding, kept working. And now this happened.”
Casas entered Friday hitting .184 with three home runs in 28 games.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.